Realtor Reveals Concerning Features He Found In A $850K Model Home That ‘Trick People Into Thinking It’s A Nice House’
New construction homes have become notorious for their low-quality and shoddy construction.
Khosro | Xacto | Getty Images Signature | Canva Pro Nowadays, unless you're a gazillionaire, quality no longer seems to exist. Even expensive furniture is usually made of particle board, clothes fall apart after two washes unless they're couture, and every refrigerator dies in five years tops.
The list goes on and shockingly includes new-construction houses — even, as one realtor on TikTok has shown, the staggeringly expensive ones.
The realtor revealed concerning features he discovered in a brand new $850,000 model home.
You'd think that given how ludicrously expensive they are — and the fact that, you know, they're our literal shelter — houses would still be built with some care and consideration for quality, right? LOL you sweet summer child, they are all garbage.
OK, maybe not all of them. But a LOT of new-build houses are really, really shoddily built and poorly designed in ways that you probably wouldn't notice unless you know what you're looking for. This is where realtor Ryan Ecklund's wildly popular TikToks come in.
Ecklund recently posted a series of videos showing just how garbage-y American houses have become, even when they come with insane price tags — like a poorly executed model home he explored that costs $850,000, a staggeringly high price for Ecklund's area.
"I had no intention of being the guy who craps on new construction, but here we are," he wrote in the caption of one of his videos.
Ecklund found several potentially dangerous flaws in the expensive new-construction home.
I know a couple who recently relocated to a new-build house they paid over $1 million for. A year into living there, several of the doors no longer shut because the frames had settled weirdly — an indicator that whoever built it didn't build it with much care for, you know, the basics of physics and structural integrity. In a $1.4 million house!
Ecklund's video revealed the kind of corners that are routinely cut in today's new construction — things that only the most eagle-eyed buyers would notice.
In the $850,000 house he showed in a video, a slide-glass door was not only unlocked — it was unlockable because the door's latch didn't line up properly with the door jamb.
The door also opened onto a bizarre sort of moat of large gravel for reasons that are anybody's guess. Hope you like getting jabbed in the arch by a rock when you step out into your backyard on a lovely summer's day!
Ecklund found even more concerning mishaps in other parts of the house — like a stud in the basement that was cracked and broken because the builder had just rammed a bunch of nails into the joint.
Ecklund also found aesthetic design features he claimed are meant to 'trick' buyers into thinking it's a nice house.
Actual construction flaws are bad enough, but adding insult to injury is the functional and design details inside.
Ecklund called out the kitchen in the $850,000 model home, in which an island sacrifices tons of cupboard space for shelving that seemed to function purely as a place for a home stager to place attractive bric-a-brac because their location made them totally inconvenient for actual storage.
Then there's the drawer-style microwave oven — a trend in recent years that, speaking from experience, needs to go away immediately. A dear friend of mine got one in a kitchen remodel and instantly hated it. The drawer moves at a snail's pace, for starters, and they're virtually impossible to keep clean. But they look expensive, so there's that!
But the thing that truly sent Ecklund — and many commenters — into orbit was the crappy plastic faucet in the kitchen. Just a junky, basic Home Depot faucet like you'd find in a cheap apartment. In a house that costs nearly a million dollars!
"No way in hell am I paying $850k for PLASTIC FAUCETS," one commenter wrote. "I live in a newer DOUBLE-WIDE and even I don’t have plastic faucets," another exclaimed — which really does say it all.
Data shows new-construction homes are frequently poorly built—and most owners regret buying them.
Lest you think Ecklund is just particularly cranky or some kind of design snob, think again — a 2022 survey of home buyers by industry analysts at Real Estate Witch found that two-thirds of home buyers regret their new-construction home purchase and wish they'd bought an older house instead.
Chief among the reasons? Build quality, which 31% said soured them on their new-build house. Sixty-five percent said inspections uncovered major issues with their house, despite it being brand spanking new.
More than a third also reported that their builder had obviously cut corners during construction, even as both construction costs and building schedules went way over what was quoted.
No wonder then that many finance experts have changed their tune on the long-held advice that buying is always better. Between the over-inflated housing market and staggeringly low-quality builds, renting is often a better use of your money these days.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.